


Wild Platonic Relationship in the Working Class

by oppaidio



Category: Oingo Boingo (Band), Phantom of the Paradise (1974)
Genre: Acquaintances to Enemies to Friends to Lovers to Enemies, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-14
Updated: 2021-02-03
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:35:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27557734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oppaidio/pseuds/oppaidio
Summary: an alternate reality set in an undefined period of time in which oingo boingo definitely does not exist and danny elfman is a completely normal starbucks customer. or he might be some kind of machine malfunctioning due to sweatlogging, or possibly a mysterious beast emerged from an unmapped cave system.
Relationships: Danny Elfman/Steve Bartek
Comments: 13
Kudos: 11





	1. Wild Customer Service in the Working Class

**Author's Note:**

> a collaborative effort written in a bout of mass hysteria, not at all representative of any thoughts and feelings we may have towards any of the characters. i condemn supercumrat69 to eternal damnation.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> steve bartek, male barista and roommate of paul williams, is confronted by the arrival of an unusual customer during his shift at starbucks.

**Figure 1. An ominous vision.**

_“Regarde un peu ça."_ _Danny gesticulated erratically. "Et voilà…et voilà…" He began thrashing in perpetual motion, like when you hit a door stopper and it swings back and forth really fast. His eyelids shuttered open and closed like window blinds as he seized about in a highly concerning manner. Steve glanced left and right, realizing he stood between a horn section and a large man with his hair trimmed into a tight V-shape, who merely nodded back in acknowledgement. They maintained a healthy distance of at least ten feet from Danny as they stared on silently, clutching crucifixes tightly to their fully-clothed chests._

Steve jolted awake. Already the dream had begun to slip from his memory, and he was left only with a feeling of apprehension twisting in the pit of his stomach. Shuddering slightly, he pulled the covers over his head and tried to go back to sleep.

* * *

It was 17:38 on a Tuesday, Steve’s shift had begun after the lunch rush hours subsided, and he was hoping for a relatively slow evening. The usual crowd at this time were college students fueling their workloads with caffeine and free WiFi, or wearied interns making coffee runs for late night exec meetings. However, Steve had a premonition that tonight might be different; a _[deadly premonition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadly_Premonition)_. Perhaps this was due to the faint smell wafting in through the door, or the third customer to tear off their shirt after ordering a Caffé Americano.

Confirming his previous suspicions, a ginger-haired man clad in a skin-tight tank top and suspenders paced through the doors and into the dimly lit room decorated in contemporary style.

Steve bleakly accepted his fate.

As he approached the counter, Steve broke his usual protocol and hesitated on even asking for the man’s order. Instead, he found himself fascinated by the stark contrast of his hazel eyes against his pale face. Perhaps he would have been just another customer, had Steve not already made the assumption that he most likely had a warrant out for his arrest. Why else would he be so out of breath if he weren’t on the run from law enforcement?

The man didn’t notice Steve’s obvious staring and took a good ten minutes to pore over the menu of artisanal coffees and pastries plastered across the wall behind him, all whilst the both of them stood in complete silence. As he browsed the selections, he splayed his upper body across the counter, casting a shadow over the vegan bagels in the display case below. Steve pretended, more to himself than anyone else, that he didn’t also notice the nervous little jig he was doing with his legs.

The longer the ginger gazed, the deeper his brows furrowed. Steve noticed that he was starting to break into a cold sweat. Small, inquisitive, gasping noises escaped his mouth, as if he was trying to vocalize the name of each drink without taking a breath. It seemed as though the consistent chatter of the other patrons had suddenly quieted down as well, as all eyes shifted to the strange man at the counter.

Then, like a snake, he unhinged his jaw, and less like a snake, he spoke.

“Can I get a martini served in a glass with no mixers”

“What.”

_What?_

Steve forced himself to give a quick response despite his complete and utter confusion.

“I’m really sorry sir, but we don’t serve alcoholic beverages here. This is, um, a Starbucks.”

He had to have known that, right? The giant luminescent sign at the storefront and array of items on the menu he spent _so fucking long_ looking at should have been a dead giveaway, right? Was this guy already inebriated before he even came in?

The ginger man looked visibly displeased by this comment, but remained silent, save for the impatient tapping of his nails against the counter.

Unnerved by the sudden tension in the air, Steve quickly attempted to diffuse the situation from escalating any further. “But uh...I think there’s an Italian dive bar pretty close, like a two minute drive from here, that’s down the street you could go to? Th-that is if you’re desperate enough haha…” Steve was beginning to worry about what the cat dragged in. Hopefully he wouldn’t be put in charge of mopping before his shift ended.

“Take me...there, I mean. You can’t even begin to imagine what happens when I lose my compass and I’m left alone, writhing, writhing, writhing, in the dark…”

The more the fiery-haired stranger spoke, the more Steve was sure that he recognized him from somewhere. This feeling of dread culminated further and further into his gut as the stranger began yodeling aggressively under his breath, as if he was attempting to compel Steve’s acquiescence with a siren song. Steve had no desire to go anywhere with him—frankly, the guy gave him the heebie-jeebies and looked like Ronald McDonald’s less heteronormative cousin—even if his uninhibited demeanor and sheer animal magnetism were almost irresistibly enticing. Summoning whatever courage he had left in him, he shook his head at the man. “With all due respect sir, I think it'd be best if you writhed on your own tonight.”

Evidently, this was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

**Figure 2. Danny Elfman had had enough (picture related this is him standing in line).**

“What the hell do I look like to you anyways, some middle class socialist brat who’d lower himself to the sleaze and grime of cheap beer that tastes of cat urine and hookups with Italian trash? Thanks for wasting _the_ Danny Elfman’s time.”

The man did, in fact, look like he’d lower himself to the sleaze and grime of cheap beer that tastes of cat urine and hookups with Italian trash, Steve thought to himself in a flash of shock. He could even make out the distinct shape of spaghetti and meatballs tucked away in his front pocket.

After haughtily requesting a napkin to wipe his damp forehead, “Danny Elfman” did finally leave, slinking out the employee exit like a mink preparing for a muskrat hunt.

**Figure 3. "SQUEEZE".**

Steve was responsible for closing up shop, much to his dismay. The events of the night had left him a little on edge and he wanted nothing more than to get back to the apartment he shared with his friend, Paul Williams. Once he had finished wiping down the counter one last time, he grabbed the tip box next to the register. Steve was attractive and amiable, not to mention 1.651 x 10^9 nanometers tall and as non-threatening as a man could get, so there wasn’t much effort needed on his end in order to garner a gracious amount of tips. But something caught his eye while rummaging through what he assumed to be the regular total of cash he’d usually receive.

A three hundred dollar bill, with the words “My name is Daniel Robert Elfman, call me sometime. Business, pleasure, you name it,” followed by a number underneath.

The three hundred dollar bill was clearly unusable. Danny’s face was printed across the front, and the “300” was scrawled over its real value with a glitter pen.

He was pissed that he wouldn’t be able to use the money. For the amount of Steve’s time and labor that Danny had wasted without even making a purchase, he felt he deserved some sort of genuine compensation from the clammy man.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is a revised/restrained edit of the original. our consciences are no longer cast upon a turbulent sea--now, into calmer waters.


	2. Wet and Wild in the Working Class

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> male barista steve bartek makes a starbucks delivery to paul williams’s workplace that ends in violence and tragedy.

“He better be planning on paying for this properly,” Steve groaned. The man had gotten on his nerves; prancing in here, giving him defaced money, parading around his— _Whoa. Where did that come from?_

Shaking the thought away, he resumed his gruelingly routine shift, though his mind kept drifting to the intriguing stranger. His boss might get on his ass if he saw that there was missing money in the till, so he resolved to call Daniel later that night and sort things straight. 

_‘Business, pleasure, you name it.’_ The memory of the man’s final words made his face heat up, sending a bead of sweat down the edge of his cheek, which in turn reminded him even more of his slickly dripping acquaintance. He ground his teeth and tapped his fingers across the counter in frustration. The words bounced around inside his head like the little Sony ball.

* * *

There's a bright white flash. Your brain snaps like a rubber band from Steve's third person perspective and back into your own skull. It rattles for a moment and you can feel it in your ears. If you were in the American Southwest and you heard this noise, I would hope you would have the good sense to efficiently scan the area for a rattlesnake and step carefully away. If you were in the American West, you could look up at the wide blue sky and the even bluer mountains rising in the distance. You could breathe in a frontier mirage beckoning you away from your screen, away from reading about the rivulets of sweat running down Danny Elfman's not-so-enticing chest and instead to rivers cutting into deep red canyons and the rumbling threat of a flash-flood summoned by a summer monsoon. Alas! This moment of fantastical clarity is lost as soon as it begins, after all, you are an enjoyer of Danny Elfman and a certain part of you is forever condemned to endlessly tread the path of 80s hysteria. You must know that your forward-looking vision is increasingly limited by these vibrations in your periphery, right? Could you ever hope to truly indulge in the pioneer dream of the unexplored and the enigmatic? It is no matter; the rubber band begins to sling itself around and around inside the empty cavern you call a head, building up momentum until it shoots _OUT_ of your ear, back into the same space of this little capsule we have constructed for 80s Danny, but at a slightly later time, and through a different set of eyes.

* * *

Paul Williams looked at his hands. They seemed small all of a sudden, smaller than usual, even given his petite stature. A sense of claustrophobia washed over him. Everything seemed too small, too contained, and too achingly familiar—the apartment he shared with male coffee barista Steve Bartek crammed like a sardine into a high-rise with a thousand other under-maintained and overpriced units; block after city block closing in like a concrete sarcophagus; the stars blocked out by smog and towering skyscrapers guarding the edges of every sight he had seen a thousand times before.

He shook his head, hoping to clear it. These moments of unease had plagued him from time to time, but usually not to the point of physical discomfort. To soothe his nerves, he ran a hair through his light yellow, stylishly layered hair. He was Paul Williams for Christ’s sake, and if he stood around lost in his thoughts for much longer he'd miss his first table read for the upcoming Brian de Palma movie Phantom of the Paradise! The start of production had been delayed by about 10 years due to intervention by the Hand of God, which is otherwise unimportant and you needn’t worry your pretty little head over it.

Upon arriving, Paul Williams recognized some fellow actors, and had yet to introduce himself to others. He took a seat across from a short man wearing a possibly Italian suit whose face was completely buried in the script that had been taped together to read like a newspaper. Two holes had been cut into it, behind which dark, flitting eyes could be discerned. He could also tell by the suit's distinctive sheen, its varying degrees of reflectivity, and the polarizing black color, that the material was likely a mohair and wool blend. Its lustrous properties and practicality added more depth and sophistication to Al Pacino's figure than, say, a standard black wool suit.

While some beta males might prefer to wear an undersized tank top coupled with a form-hugging pair of suspenders, Al had a taste for the finer things in life. Perhaps this was to compensate for his small stature, similar to that of Paul. _'Us short kings have to stick together'_ , he mused to himself.

“Starbucks here! Did anyone order a Grande Chestnut Praline Crème Frappuccino with steamed milk and flavors of caramelized chestnuts and spices—topped with whipped cream and spiced praline crumbs, and a $10 vanilla biscotti with almonds?” Steve’s voice rang through the studio with the intonation of the bells in the Notre Dame Cathedral de Paris, all tuned to F sharp.

The mere mention of “Starbucks” instantly aroused some primal instinct within Pacino. He snapped his head around 270 degrees to lock eyes with the man who dared to speak its name. He slammed his fists on the table and hoisted himself up before stalking over to the male barista with an ominous glare plastered across his handsome Italian face. Paul Williams, sensing danger, also rose from his chair and blocked Al Pacino's beeline for his roommate.

"What's all this then," Paul Williams lilted, posturing himself protectively in front of Steve as he addressed the actor. He thanked God that Pacino’s size was akin to his own, or else his stance would’ve seemed more ridiculous than imposing.

“I specifically ordered a _Dunkaccino_ , a unique blend of coffee and hot chocolate flavors, with an added extra indulgence of delicious whipped cream. From Dunkin’ Donuts! Do you understand that you’re putting my livelihood in jeopardy?”

Steve was taken aback by this accusation, not only because he was being chastised by _Al Pacino_ , but because he was simply following directions. Surely the anonymous sender who placed the order using the pseudonym “D. E.” knew what they were doing when they had the Starbucks delivered to Pacino.

“When I agreed to be in Jack and Jill, the 1981 American comedy film starring Adam Sandler and Adam Sandler dressed a woman, I signed a contract with Dunkin’ Donuts agreeing that I wouldn’t even LOOK in the general direction of a Starbucks,” Pacino profusely postulated. “In fact, my entire career is at risk just by having you in the same vicinity of me, could someone please escort this fool off the premises?” Pacino promptly pleaded.

“I-I’m so sorry Mr. Pacino, it’s just, I was given specific instructions to have this delivered to you, so I…” Steve trailed off, genuinely at a loss for words. He wished he was getting paid more than minimum wage, and the fake tip he got the other night only worsened the blow. He could see Pacino's apprehension quickly turning to rage, his fists clenching and unclenching methodically in preparation for a fight. Starbucks didn’t offer him any health insurance either, so if he were injured because of this, it would be up to him to pay any hospital fees.

The sweat forming on Steve’s forehead glistened like a trail of mucus left behind by a snail on a hot pavement in June and he found himself wondering if this was what Danny felt like, all the time. Curse him, to be thinking of something so vulgar at a time like this.

**Figure 4. A lasagnical precedent.**

Al Pacino growled like frozen lasagna creaking in the oven. Trembling, his restraint finally broke, and he took another step aggressively towards the “baristo”. Paul Williams tried to steel himself against the incensed Italian-American but was promptly swept aside as Pacino made a move towards Steve’s uninsured jugular. 

The next few moments passed in a blur. Pacino’s feverish lunge was broken by an anguished shriek and then a low gurgling, like that scene in The Godfather III where his daughter is killed because that movie had definitely come out by this point in time and to much critical acclaim as well. The coffee in Steve’s hand had splashed across Al Pacino upon impact, who stumbled back with a wail. At first, Paul Williams thought Pacino was sinking to his knees in recoil against the burning liquid, but he soon realized that, in fact, he was merely  _ sinking. _ Into a puddle on the floor, to be exact—his entire body, suit included, was melting, as his strangled cries devolved into unintelligible frothing noises. “And you may ask yourself:  _ well, how did I get here?” _ Paul heard a voice in his head say, as he looked up at Steve’s stunned expression, then back at the floor with mild perturbation.

“Bring a bucket and a mop...for this wet ass Pacino…”


End file.
